


Paradox

by thesilenceinbetween



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Angst, Child Abuse, F/M, Parent/Child Incest, Sexual Abuse, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-25
Updated: 2012-03-25
Packaged: 2017-11-02 11:58:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 460
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/368745
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesilenceinbetween/pseuds/thesilenceinbetween
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the end, this is what he teaches her with every brush of his lips against her skin: love is pain. Love is weakness. Love is being torn apart until the pieces are too small to be seen. Regina and lessons learned from her parents.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Paradox

**Author's Note:**

> I swear to the deities, one day I will write another Regina story that does not involve incest, but this came to me while I was drinking and falling asleep while watching/mocking _Twilight_ , and it's not like anything good could ever have come from _that_. So yes, this is fucked up, but hopefully in a good (not bad?) way.
> 
> As always, I own nothing and make no profit, monetary or otherwise, from the publication of this story.

Regina learns at far too young an age that sex is just another form of communication. Mama's bruising fingers tell her all that she needs to know about herself: she is filthy, abhorrent. She is merely an accident of biology, one tethering Mama to a life that she was meant to escape long ago. Nothing about her is redeeming or desirable. She is unwanted. Unloved.

Daddy's soft kisses and gentle caresses, though, whisper that she is precious and adored. The first time that he comes to her, she is only thirteen, and Mama is gone for the day, off buying forbidden spells and potions deep in the forest. Afterwards, shame will not allow him to look her in the face for months, and Regina cries herself to sleep each night because she's certain that it's all her fault, but the next time that Mama makes a long and distant journey, he once again takes the girl into his bed, just as he does each subsequent time.

Regina hates him for it, because this is sick and _wrong_ , and they're not supposed to do this; _he's_ not supposed to do this to her. Then she sees the tears that form in his eyes as his fingers ghost over the bruises that Mama left on her skin, bruises whose identical twins mar his own flesh, and she forgives him, as always. He's the only one who's ever shown her kindness, after all; he's the only one who comes close to understanding.

That doesn't mean, though, that she hates this any less. His mouth descends, so warm and wet, between her parted thighs, and the feeling makes her want to die. She claws at her skin, digging her fingernails into her upper arms, trying to make herself _hurt_ , but tension continues to build in the pit of her stomach until everything just _shatters_.

Regina can't hate her father, not without feeling guilty, so she hates herself instead. She hates her traitorous body for the way that it arches into his touch; she hates that the word _don't_ always gets caught in her throat. She hates that, in spite of everything, she still loves him more than anything else in the world.

In the end, this is what Daddy teaches her with every brush of his lips against her skin: love is pain. Love is weakness. Love is being torn apart until the pieces are too small to be seen. So it's for this reason that, when faced with a choice between the thing she loves most and a chance at happiness, Regina rips her father's heart out of his chest with her bare hand, and it's for this reason, she realizes far too late, that the choice was a paradox to begin with.


End file.
